Q and A: George Crump, Storage Switzerland

Last time, we met George was in Boston for the BDevent. Now based in Texas, we are delighted that’ll be in Frankfurt this week for SNW Europe. Here’s a little more on George:

Q. Tell us a bit about your firm?

GC: Storage Switzerland is an analyst firm focused on the storage, server virtualization and cloud marketplaces. We work with technology suppliers to help educate the market on the various topics that concern those marketplaces through the use of content like articles, blogs, briefing reports, case studies and product test drives. All of that content is published on our web site storage-switzerland.com. In addition to this material we have blogging responsibilities on Information Week, Network Computing and SearchStorage.

Q. What is hot in storage this year?

GC: 2010 and more than likely 2011 will be maturing years for more than they will be a breakout year for any particular technology. The technologies that we expect to see major maturation are solid state disk, cloud storage and network convergence. We also expect to see server virtualization be the key driver in advancements in storage including driving down the entry price of shared storage in the first time adopter market as well as continued pressure on improving performance in the high end market.

Q. How many storage events do you attend each year?

GC: We usually cover both storage networking worlds and now SNW Europe. We also cover VMworld USA every year. We occasionally will attend Storage Decisions. Finally we have attend every The BD Event and will continue to do so. I am most looking forward to SNW Europe as I have not attended that before and I am giving a talk on “Addressing the Storage Challenges Caused By Desktop Virtualization”

Q. What types of stories or companies are likely to attract your attention this year?

GC: I am always interested in solid state disk as well as the general deduplication market. My colleague Eric Slack is become quite the specialist in object storage based systems and storage resource monitoring tools.

Q. How many briefings do you do per week?

GC: We typically have an open spot for non-client briefings once per day at either 10AM Central time or 3PM central time depending on the country of origin of the supplier. The rest of the day is devoted to client and end-user briefings as well as of course to creating the actual content. As time allows and if our interest is there we will write up a briefing note that is posted to our web site and distributed to the supplier, that summarizes our thoughts on the briefing.

Q. What is the best way to pitch a story to you?

GC: We really don’t receive story pitches per se. We like to be briefed on a technology or product and then write up our own finding on the product. We will then write stand alone articles that provide thought leadership and education on the storage, server virtualization and cloud market places. As for reaching us, without question it is email. gcrump@storage-switzerland.com

Q. What is your favorite blog?

GC: Other than my own? I’d say my favorite is Mike Workman’s CEO of Pillar, followed closely by Howard Marks.

Q. What is your favorite piece of technology?

GC: Anything Apple. Right now the iPad is my primary travel device and it has become quite a replacement for my laptop.

Q. What is the best advice for companies that provide briefings?

GC: Remind me what you do on every briefing. I talk to a lot of companies and sometimes I forget who does what. Second get right to the point. I’ve been doing this a while. I know that storage is growing and customers are having challenges meeting the demands of users. Third use pictures, I’ve heard they are worth a 1,000 words.

Q. What is your favorite restaurant?

GC: Eduardo Mexican Restaurant in Stafford Texas outside of Houston. A little hole in the wall restaurant that makes a special salsa by request and it is spicy as I have every tested. The rest of the food is good too.

Q. Are you a social media lover?

GC: Don’t tell anyone but I tolerate social media, I’m pretty sure it’s just a bunch of industry insiders that are chatting with each other. I’m not convinced that a lot of IT readers actually use it for information. We are there and we use it I’m just not in love with it.

Q. Tell us something no one knows about you?

GC: I am an avid triathlete (swim, bike run). I do three or four long distance events (half Ironmans) per year and as many short distance events as I can squeeze into my schedule. A couple of years ago I did 47 in one year.

A big thank to George for sharing some of the Storage Switzerland goodness. When we catch up with him for #storagebeers in Frankfurt we’ll also add in the Why is it called Storage Switzerland? – Prost!